HEALTH AND SAFETY; More than 50% of Bellingham's housing stock are rentals, yet no program exists to ensure the health and safety of renters. Bellingham should have an ordinance that will protect renters.
ZONING ENFORCEMENT: Additionally, by ignoring its own zoning codes, the Bellingham city government has turned neighborhoods into rooming house districts. You can demand the enforcement of zoning codes, too.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Rental Safety and Health Founders at City Council Meeting

On Monday evening the city council decided to move forward with the most lax and ineffective version of a rental licensing ordinance. On 23 June, the council's Planning Committee had provided three versions of a rental health and safety ordinance to the Committee of the Whole for consideration at the 7 Jul council session. You can view a summary chart of those options here.

Unfortunately, the Committee of the Whole chose Option 1, the one proffered by Council Member Murphy. You can review this watered-down version of an ordinance in its entirety at the council's webpage here - Draft Ordinance 6-23-14 Registration Only. The other two versions can be seen also at the same page here. Even these two are not gems but at least they provide for inspections.

I provided comments on this measure during the public comment period at the beginning of the city council meeting. You can view a video of my comments here at video counter number 11:50.

The problems one encounters with the selected version of this ordinance is that there is not one shred of a requirement for inspections. All is complaint based, just as we have had for the past decades, the process that does not work. Below is what Tim Johnson at the Cascadia Weekly had to say about the council's actions on rental health and safety. You can read the entire Gristle column, Call of the Mild, here where Tim has hit the nail on the head.

"Council... appears to have lost their way on a
registration program for rental units in the city, appearing to jettison every
beneficial part of the original proposal in favor of—basically—a telephone
directory of landlords tacked on to the bare bones of a complaint-driven
system. As several commenters at their meeting noted, there is already a
directory of landlords, and there is already a procedure that allows tenants to
complain of their shabby tenements. Thus, after more than two decades of work
on this issue, Council appears on the threshold of glossing gossamer, cementing
in place a “feel good” system already deemed inadequate.

Property managers and brokers, of course, joyously love it,
as it compels them to do nothing. It does nothing to alter the power imbalance
between the owners and sellers of private property and the 54 percent of city
residents who rent from them. As commenters noted, tenants who complain get
evicted and they get their references shredded.

The centerpiece of a responsible rental licensing program
are audits and inspections that yield data that informs policy about the city’s
rental housing stock. Even modest inspections put landlords on notice that they
can no longer rely solely on the silence of their tenants on issues of public
health and safety. Over the past three years six fires have displaced nearly 20
renters in Bellingham. None of these properties had been reported to the
city under the current complaint-based system since most of the tenants were
unaware there was a problem and untrained to recognize one.

Council’s malaise on these issues, we’ll argue, is that—with
notable exceptions—no member is pushing particularly hard in one direction, and
there is no member at all pushing back hard the other way to yield dimension
and stakes, even urgency, to their discussions. The public does arrive to scold
and beat them, but generally only when they’re already on the precipice, having
committed third and final to a mediocre plan.

The council has voted to have a hearing on this questionable measure sometime in September as it was recognized that the council docket was pretty full in August. I would suggest further that the council wait until at least October, when one large stakeholder group, the WWU student body, is back in town. More importantly, the tenants must come forward and call out the council on this risible and ineffective choice, essentially a confirmation of the status quo.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

onestly Mr Connoboy are you REALLY expecting that the City council has any interest in the Bellingham hicks that vote.

City council mysteriously (VERY MYSTERIOUSLY) are Real estate puppets for reasons one can only guess and various real estate and rental people have some super expertise in tugging the council stringsl because for 20 YEARS no mayor or council member has been allowed to suggest effective controls

The council seems oriented to public disservice as witness its unbelievable indifference and out of contact action of intalling traffic controls that enabled outside interests to attack Bellingham voters and take their fines to benefit outside profiteers

Now there you have an indicator of ineptitude and contempt as you could find.

So what now with their blatent refusal to act reponsibly against the underhand currents of special real estate and landlord concerns

If I were a city business owner I would be screaming against the discrimination that charges EVERY city business with taxes and controls while the real estate people and landlords are granted toothless exemption to do as they please without consequence and without oversight.

Mr Connoby logic in this town is hardly breathing. We live in a morass of the power of special interests just as in Washington DC and I wish I could uncover the alleyways by which the Real estate and rental interests here are so totally in control of successive councils and mayors Its disgraceful

I think there are several on the council who actually do have an interest in us "hicks". That being said, there are others who gave a totally different impression of their philosophies of government when they ran for office. This I find reprehensible.

And yes, critical thinking is essentially out the window. Disengenuousness reigns.

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About Me

Dick is a retired intelligence analyst and resource manager who spent 30 years in the military and the federal government in Asia, Europe and the US. He moved to Bellingham in 2002. Aside from this blog, Dick writes for a local news site NWCitizen. He is a Block Watch Captain and for several years was an advisor and panelist at the local high schools for the Seniors' Culminating Projects. Among other activities are his current service on the Mayor’s Neighborhood Advisory Commission, the Campus Community Coalition at WWU and his former participation on the Steering Committee of the Citizens' Forum of Bellingham. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Samish Neighborhood Association. Dick served as the Coordinator of the Retired Senior Volunteers the Bellingham Police Department for several years. For eight years he has worked part-time at WWU to provide crowd control for collegiate sporting events. For several seasons, he also operated the scoreboard for the WWU Women's Softball Team.

Followers

The Rationale for Rental Licensing

There is the definitive experience of cities that have already adopted rental licensing and inspections in the face of exactly the same opposition as we are seeing in Bellingham. Ultimately, each of these cities was proven correct in its resolve to move ahead to protect the safety and health of the renters. We already know that the city of Pasco, WA found that 15% of the units inspected under their program had serious life/safety issues. 10% had mold problems. A full 85% had problems of varying degrees. The city of Gresham, OR performed over 1600 inspections in 2009 and issued, as a result, over 4,000 citations. Lexington, KY performed inspections of units near the University of Kentucky and found that 50% had life/safety issues. Sacramento, CA began an inspection program during which one third of the units inspected had serious safety and health issues. The question why does anyone believe that the condition of rental housing here in Bellingham does not mirror that which is found in cities that have the statistics to show that time and time again the condition of rentals in our cities is problematic? All we have to date from those who oppose licensing are broad statements by the landlords and their paladins that are completely and utterly unsubstantiated. The Zonemaven has searched in vain for the horror stories that these opponents of licensing and inspections have predicted. On the other hand, The Zonemaven did find over 100 cities that have licensing AND inspections without the catastrophic effect for the rental markets that the landlords would have you believe. (See this blog's sidebar at bottom left for list)

One Reason Illegal Rooming Houses Do Not Work

The limit for unrelated persons at a single family home rental is three residents. Leases are signed by three people who then invite additional renters to join them to lower per capita rental rates. The perverse effect is that rental rates tend to rise under these circumstances making it difficult for single families to rent single family homes. Some local rental agencies facilitate this practice.

"To say that a family is so equivalent to a ragtag collection of college roommates as to require identical treatment in zoning decisions defies the reality of the place of the family in American society, despite any changes that institution has undergone in recent years. Only the most cynical among us would say that the American family has devolved to the point of no greater importance or consideration in governmental decision making than a group of college roommates." (Stegeman v. City of Ann Arbor)